It’s been it’s been two and half years since we last saw Elisabeth Moss’ June trying to keep her family safe from the totalitarian state of Gilead and its violent supporters in Toronto, and now the sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale is upon us. And yes, rage, resistance and revolution are brewing.
The series, based on Margaret Atwell’s best-selling novel first premiered in April 2017 and featured June, then known as Offred, or Of Fred, her master, in the dystopian drama where women known as handmaids are forced into sexual servitude to repopulate the declining society, with harrowing results.
Now, June is leading the rebellion to challenge the powerful leaders of Gilead.
“Now it’s time for them to be afraid of us,” she says.
As Season 6 opens, June is on a train with her child but without her husband as she flees to Canada as a refugee from Gilead, which has taken over much of the United States.
Also on that train is Serena Joy Waterford, played by Yvonne Strahovski, the wife of Fred who has also has her own child with her. Serena has inflicted untold emotional abuse on June, including watching gleefully as her husband repeatedly rapes the handmaid. So to say that they have an uneasy relationship would be an understatement.
It’s unclear why Serena, an oppressor, is on the train with dozens of oppressed women fleeing the constraints of the totalitarian regime, which resonates with today’s headlines even more deeply than it did when the series began eight years ago.
The first three episodes begin streaming today on Hulu, with seven more to come on successive Tuesdays.
But even as the theme of the season is revolution, it also represents hope, inspiration and even joy.
After the ten episodes conclude, it will not be the final chapter. It’s been announced that the tale of the handmaids will continue, based on Atwood’s 2019 follow-up novel, “The Testaments.”
